


things that break the silence

by nightswatch



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Post-The Raven King
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-07 00:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6777448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightswatch/pseuds/nightswatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam has left for college and Ronan didn't expect the Barns to be so quiet without him there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	things that break the silence

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set POST The Raven King, in case you're worried about spoilers.

It’s 2 AM when Ronan’s phone starts ringing. He didn’t wait for it, except that he did. He’s been waiting all day. Not consciously, most of the time, he had work to do after all, but he kept finding himself checking his phone for missed calls.

There was one, shortly after noon. Declan. Ronan ignored it with the utmost enthusiasm.

He’s not sure when exactly he stared answering his phone whenever it’s Adam’s name that lights up the screen. One week after he left for college. That’s when.

Ronan grabs his phone, casts a glance at Opal who’s curled up on an armchair, and goes outside. “Parrish,” Ronan says when he picks up. It’s a clear night. Quiet. It’s too quiet.

“Sorry,” Adam says. “I was gonna call earlier.”

Something scuttles in the darkness.

“I… something came up.”

It’s not like he promised. He didn’t. Anyway, Adam has a life. Things come up. Ronan should tell him that it’s fine. It _is_ fine. But he’s still been waiting for him to call all day, even though he didn’t promise, and it’s 2 AM and Ronan isn’t sure if he can deal with anything that’s going on in his mind right now without breaking something.

“Did I wake you up?” Adam asks.

“No,” Ronan says. Because he’s been waiting. “No, you didn’t.”

“I got a postcard from Gansey.”

“Yeah.” Gansey called a couple of days ago. Ronan didn’t answer, but he listened to the voicemail last night. Then he listened to it again, listened to Blue laughing in the background, listened to Gansey go on and on about all the things they’d seen since his last voicemail. Then he put down his phone and listened into the darkness.

“Are you sure I didn’t–”

“How was your day?” Ronan asks. He doesn’t want to talk about his sleep schedule, which is a mystery to the smartest and wisest of people, including himself. He needs Adam’s voice to break the silence, just for a couple of minutes.

So Adam talks. Adam talks about his classes and people Ronan hasn’t met yet and buildings Ronan hasn’t seen since he helped Adam move into his dorm room. Adam talks and Ronan rests his forehead against a wooden pole. How has he been waiting for Adam Parrish to tell him about disgusting cafeteria food all day? How does he never want him to stop?

“What about you?” Adam asks.

“I repaired a fence.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“It was,” Ronan says. And why is he talking about fences? “Extremely exciting.”

Adam laughs.

Ronan wants to say a lot of things all of a sudden. “Just tell me about your Friday morning class, I know you want to.” At this point, Ronan feels like he knows more about Adam’s Friday morning class than he knows about anything else in the world.

So Adam talks about his Friday morning class and an insect buzzes past Ronan’s ear and the wind picks up and leaves rustle and the silence is not so unbearable anymore.

“Did you fall asleep?” Adam asks after a while. Amusement has crept into his voice. “Sorry, I got a bit carried away.”

“I didn’t fall asleep.” Ronan opts for sounding offended. He’s tired, a headache is throbbing insistently behind his temples, reminding him of sleepless nights, of nights spent dreaming but not resting, but he wants Adam to keep talking all night.

“Do you want to?” Adam asks. “Go to sleep, I mean?”

“I’m perfectly capable of letting you know when I’m too tired to talk to you, thank you very much.”

“Ronan…”

“Hm?”

“Go to bed. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Aren’t you doing homework all day and sniffing books and… I don’t know, what else do you do? Prepare for your Friday class next week?”

“I think can spare five minutes for you.”

“You’re so generous with your time.”

Adam sighs at him. Ronan would give a great many things to feel that puff of breath on his skin. He would give a great many things to have Adam here with him.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Ronan is waiting already. “If that’s what you want.”

“Ronan,” Adam says, “go get some sleep.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“And give Gansey a call. Or at least send him a text. A carrier pigeon. I don’t care.”

“Gansey knows that I’m fine.”

“Gansey knows that you never answer your phone.”

“Exactly.”

“And yet we’re talking.”

“You’re not Gansey.”

“I guess I’m not,” Adam says. Something has sneaked into his voice that Ronan can’t quite put a finger on. Something smug.

“Do you…” Ronan starts. He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t know where he was going with this in the first place.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Ronan says. It’s all half-sentences these days, their conversations stall and yet Ronan wants nothing more than to keep talking. He’s one terribly quiet day away from inventing some reason why he needs Adam to come visit him. Something he needs help with at the Barns, something urgent that can’t possibly wait, something, anything.

He won’t simply ask him. He _can’t_ ask him.

Adam likes where he is. He has friends and classes and homework and Ronan isn’t going to drag him away from all that just because he can’t stand the silence that has fallen over the Barns since Adam left. Who would have thought that the presence of one person could make such a difference? Who would have thought that Adam Parrish would cause such a ruckus in his life?

Now that it’s just him and Opal, there’s no one making a mess in the kitchen, no one digging through books, curses echoing loudly when an especially tall tower topples over, no one calling to him across the field, no one laughing at him when he comes back to the house caked in mud. Opal does her own thing; Ronan isn’t sure if he’s supposed to ask her where she goes, what she does. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if she’s even there. Sometimes he finds her sleeping in the barn, hiding in the attic, exploring rooms that Ronan hasn’t set foot into in months.

He meant to clear one of them out for Adam at the beginning of the summer, but after they’d left Adam’s belongings – all piled into a single box – downstairs by the door and hadn’t looked at them for roughly two days, and after Adam had toppled into bed with him, Ronan decided that he rather liked having Adam next to him. He’d known that before, of course, but having him there every day was a wholly different thing. There was something steady about it, something reliable. Adam slipping into bed with him became a constant in his life.

Now Ronan’s room is quiet when he goes to bed at night. When he closes his eyes, he can hear no one’s breathing but his own. No one makes soft noises next to him when he wakes up. No one complains about him pushing the covers off the bed.

No one kisses him in the small hours of the morning.

Chainsaw lands on the railing next to him and clacks her beak at him, offended when he doesn’t immediately react. Ronan glares at nothing in particular. It’s not Chainsaw’s fault that Adam isn’t here. No one is at fault.

Adam is quiet at the other end of the line, but he’s there and Ronan can’t hang up. _It’s too quiet without you here_. “Good night,” Ronan says. Somehow their conversations have become about all the things they don’t say. Ronan doesn’t know how. Not yet.

“Good night,” Adam says. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I’ll make an effort to pick up.”

“I feel so special.”

“Fuck’s sake, Parrish.”

“Bye,” Adam says cheerfully.

“Bye,” Ronan says. He waits for Adam to hang up. Then it’s quiet again, despite the wind and the rustling leaves, despite Chainsaw’s insistent clacking.

Ronan goes back inside. He gets Opal a blanket, he leaves Chainsaw in the kitchen to wreak havoc and goes upstairs. It’s too quiet. The stairs creak, then the silence is back, his door shuts with a click, his clothes land on the floor, his shoes join them with a thunk, and after that the silence is even worse.

He opens the window to let in the late night noises. His bed is too cold and too big and his room is still too quiet.

*

“I woke you up, didn’t I?”

Ronan grunts. Who would have thought that the answer to that would actually be _yes_. “No,” he says.

“Sorry,” Adam says anyway. Ronan can almost see him smiling. The image in his mind doesn’t come close to the real thing.

“I wasn’t sleeping.” Sitting up, Ronan glances at his alarm clock. It’s nearly midnight. He has no idea when he fell asleep. Did Adam promise he’d call? No, he didn’t. It’s Tuesday. Adam has an early class on Wednesdays, so Ronan, for once, wasn’t waiting. “What’s up?”

“I still haven’t met whoever’s living in the room next to mine but their taste in music is uncannily similar to yours.”

“They keeping you up?”

“You could say that.” Adam yawns. “I’m buying earplugs first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t need them until now. Isn’t college supposed to be really loud? Are you even allowed to complain about this?” Ronan sticks his feet under the sheets. “Are you sure you’re doing college right?”

“Don’t tell me how to do college,” Adam says.

Ronan smirks.

“Ronan…”

There’s some rustling. Still studying, then. He’s probably sitting on that tiny bed of his, surrounded by notes. Ronan remembers pushing him down on that tiny bed the day Adam moved in, remembers every place Adam’s fingertips touched him, remembers Adam’s lips against his. Ronan rubs his eyes. “Yeah?”

“Are you… how are you?”

“Fine,” Ronan says curtly. He glances at the other half of his bed. Still cold, still empty. “You?”

“I… yeah, I’m fine, too. Except for the noise pollution.”

Ronan tuts.

“Tell me something.”

“Like, what?”

“Anything,” Adam says. There’s more rustling. “Tell me about the Barns.”

“Still there,” Ronan mutters. Except that Adam probably wanted him to say more than two words, so Ronan talks. He talks about the repairs he made, about what he’s working on this week, about Opal. He doesn’t mention the silence.

Ronan can’t remember the last time he talked this much, but Adam doesn’t interrupt him, he hums and sighs and huffs, and even though it’s Ronan himself who’s breaking the silence, it’s better than waiting for his phone to ring. Because he does wait for his phone to ring. And when it rings and it isn’t Adam who’s calling him, Ronan generally has to fight the impulse to toss his phone into a field. He tells himself that it’s Declan’s fault, because he calls him so often, but not even Ronan is convinced anymore.

“I can’t believe it,” Adam says after what feels like an hour but most likely hasn’t been more than ten minutes, “it’s actually quiet.”

“Guess I should let you sleep,” Ronan says.

“Well, you were already sleeping when I called you, so…”

“I wasn’t.”

“You’re– Never mind. I’ll talk to you soon. Maybe before the sun goes down next time.”

“Hey, I’m always here to listen to your noise complaints,” Ronan says. “Nothing delights me more.” Possibly, he should have toned down the sarcasm a bit. “Seriously,” he adds. “I don’t care if the sun is up or down when you call.”

“I know,” Adam says. He does. He knows. “See you… I mean… you know.” He yawns again. “I think today turned my brain into mush.”

“Well, go to sleep, then.”

“In a minute.”

Neither of them says a word. Ronan has a long list of things he could say but won’t say because he still doesn’t know how. One of those things comes awfully close to _I miss you_. In between those long silent seconds, Ronan thinks, there might be some things that Adam doesn’t know how to say either.

After five solid minutes of silence, Ronan tells Adam to go the fuck to bed. He stares at his phone for another five minutes after they’ve hung up before he puts it down. Then he reaches for his headphones.

It’s the only way he knows how to deal with the silence.

*

When Ronan wakes up there’s something soft between his fingers. Worn and threadbare. Familiar. Ronan gives himself a minute. He doesn’t have much of a choice.

It’s morning, early morning, just shy of 5 o’clock.

Flicking on the lights, Ronan stares at the red shirt in his hand. He knows that shirt. The last time he saw it, it was pooled on the floor next to Adam’s bed in his dorm room. It’s still there, maybe not next to the bed, but it’s at college, with Adam, and yet Ronan is holding it in his hand.

He didn’t mean to bring it back, but he was distracted.

Ronan lets the shirt drop to the floor. It’s going to stay there until he figures out what to do with it. He’ll have to get rid of it before Adam comes back. In a few weeks. For Thanksgiving. He’s not sure why he doesn’t want Adam to see it. Perhaps because it would tell Adam something that Ronan doesn’t want him to know, whatever it is.

Casting another glance at the red shirt on his floor, Ronan gets out of bed, pulls on his clothes, contemplates breakfast.

Breakfast ends up being postponed. Instead he grabs his phone, goes downstairs, and picks up his car keys. Chainsaw is watching him from the porch as he marches out the door. He gets into the BMW. He doesn’t know where he’s going but he’s going somewhere. He’s going somewhere and he turns up the music and drives down empty streets. He doesn’t care where he’s going as long as he’s going fast.

The sun is starting to rise and Ronan is still driving, unable to take his foot off the accelerator. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel, speakers blaring.

He knows where he’s going now.

Ronan is halfway to Adam’s college. The second he realizes, he pulls over. He can’t go see Adam. Because, much like the shirt, him showing up at Adam’s dorm this early in the morning, unannounced, for no reason at all, would tell Adam something that Ronan doesn’t want him to know.

Fingers smoothing over the steering wheel, Ronan breathes in, breathes out. He rolls down the window. People are already going to work. Ronan is going nowhere.

He turns off the car radio and reaches for his phone. Adam wouldn’t be awake yet, would he? Ronan has pressed the call button next to Adam’s name without giving himself any time to properly think about it. He doesn’t even know if he’d feel guilty if he woke him up.

Adam answers his phone after two rings. He sounds slightly worried when he says, “Ronan?”

“No, someone stole my phone,” Ronan says.

“Is everything okay?”

“Sure.” Ronan is as okay as someone who’s parked at the side of the road with nowhere to go can be.

“You called me.” Adam is clearly confused and Ronan can definitely relate. “At… six in the morning.”

“What can I say, I just wanted to hear your voice, sweetcheeks.” As much as he makes it sound like a joke, it’s not. It’s about as far from a joke as it can possibly be. Minus the _sweetcheeks_.

“Ronan,” Adam says sternly. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Of course.”

“I’m just asking, because you _called_ me.”

“I know, I called you at six in the morning. I don’t even know why. I just… woke up and thought of you.” And drove halfway to his college. Which is vaguely embarrassing, now that he thinks about it. All of this is vaguely embarrassing. Ronan lets his head fall back against the headrest.

Adam doesn’t reply for a moment. Stunned silence.

“Why are you up already?” Ronan asks. “Have you finally figured out how college really works? Sleep is for the weak and all that?”

“I was gonna have an early breakfast and head to the library.”

“Right.”

“I can spare a couple of minutes,” Adam says.

“No, go have breakfast.”

“You’re not gonna tell me what this is about, are you?”

“No,” Ronan says. He should have denied that there was something to tell in the first place. Too late now. Adam is going to bring this up again. “Seriously, go have breakfast.”

“I’ll call you later.”

“Fine. Please don’t ask me if I’m okay ever again.”

“I won’t,” Adam says, which means that he will.

Obviously, Ronan could just ask him. Ask him if he’d mind if Ronan came by, just for a couple of hours, just because. He doesn’t need a reason to drop by, does he? It’s been months and Ronan still feels like he’ll never figure any of this out.

In the end, all he says is, “Adam…” It sounds a lot more like _I miss you_ than everything else he’s said to him ever since he left. Ronan isn’t sure if he’s ready for anything he says to even remotely sound like _I miss you,_ but here they are. Ronan doesn’t even want to be anywhere else. Not really.

“I know,” Adam says. He knows. That’s enough for now.

*

Ronan is in a peculiar place between being asleep and being awake. He’s at a tipping point. He can roll over and drift back into blessed unconsciousness or he can open his eyes and blink into the darkness of his room and spend the rest of the night wide awake. He was dreaming about Adam earlier. It always makes waking up a little harder, so Ronan simply refuses to wake up.

In his dream, the stairs creak. The part of him that’s on the verge of waking up thinks of Opal, sneaking about the house. There’s someone in the door, something drops to the floor. Pillow? Someone pulls at the sheets. Ronan tries to pull them back but he’s unsuccessful.

There’s something warm next to him, there’s something soft between his fingers. An old and worn red shirt comes to mind. Ronan burrows into the warmth with a sigh. Waking up will be even worse today, but Ronan can’t bring himself to care.

“Hey,” Adam says, his voice soft.

“What’re you doing here?” Ronan mumbles. He blinks. There’s something very warm and very solid in his bed. For a long, terrifying moment he’s convinced that he just pulled Adam out of a dream.

Then Adam says, “I let myself in. The lights were out, so I thought–”

“Adam.” Ronan is wide awake all of a sudden. “What are you doing here?” he asks again.

“What do you think I’m doing here? I’m sneaking into your bed in the middle of the night.”

“Why?”

“You didn’t answer your phone earlier,” Adam says. He’s so close and Ronan doesn’t care enough about tickling a more detailed explanation out of Adam right now. Because, well, Adam is in his bed.

“I was outside,” Ronan says.

“And I suppose calling me back wasn’t an option.”

“I was busy.” Busy getting a grip, mostly. “You didn’t have to come all the way here.” Except that he’s wanted nothing more than for Adam to come all the way here.

“I wanted to,” Adam says and it tells Ronan something, it tells him the same thing that he didn’t want Adam to find out. Adam’s hands wander down his spine.

Ronan could tell him that he wanted to do the same thing, that he was halfway there, but Adam actually did what Ronan didn’t manage to do and that makes all the difference. Instead, Ronan kisses him, quickly. He aims for his lips but he ends up kissing the corner of his mouth instead.

Adam’s low laughter breaks the silence.

“Fuck off.”

“Sure, I’ll just drive back to college.”

Adam has barely moved when Ronan wraps an arm around him. “I don’t think so.”

“Hm,” Adam says and then his lips are back on Ronan’s and Ronan has a hard time keeping track of where Adam’s hands are and of where his own hands want to go. It’s not easy to decide when they want to be everywhere at once.

He missed this, he missed those hands, he missed those little noises Adam makes, he missed Adam, and even just thinking it is terrifying. Adam, filling the quiet minutes of each day, Adam, and those gentle touches and– “Adam,” Ronan whispers against Adam’s lips.

Adam grips him a little tighter. Ronan kisses him a little harder.

“It was quiet without you,” Ronan eventually says.

“I thought you’d make enough noise on your own.”

That was, incidentally, what Ronan thought when he returned to the Barns after he’d dropped off Adam at college. There was a lot of work still to be done. There was more than enough to fill his days. Still, it was too quiet. Still, he waited for his phone to ring. “So did I.”

Adam’s nose bumps against his. “Well, I’m here now.”

Neither of them mentions that he’s going to leave again soon enough. Ronan takes a deep breath. Adam came all the way here; the least Ronan can do is to take a single step. “I missed you,” he says. It sounds a lot like _I love you_.

“I know,” Adam whispers.


End file.
